One’s Vantage Point Affects Baseball Lore

Was Kirk Gibson’s “Roy Hobbs” homer in the bottom of the ninth for the Dodgers in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series the Greatest Moment in Baseball History?

Or was it Babe Ruth “calling his shot” in the ’32 classic? Maybe it was Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning blow for the New York Giants in the ’51 playoffs?

Maybe you like pitching. How about Johnny Vander Meer’s back-to-back no-hitters for Cincinnati in ‘38? Don’t wait up to see that again.

They’re having a banquet in New York Monday night to determine which of 20 highlight moments in baseball is the game’s all-time thriller. The credit card company, MasterCard, polled fans and sportswriters for a promotion in which the proceeds will go to combat ALS, the disease that cut short the life of Lou Gehrig.

The promotion is all right so far as it goes. But it deals in happy moments, save for Gehrig’s farewell ceremony at Yankee Stadium in ’39.

Now, you and I know baseball isn’t all moonlight and roses, right? Baseball is suffering. Every home fan knows that. Consider the most famous piece of baseball literature of all time, “Casey at the Bat.” Is that about the pitcher who struck him out? Is there one mention about the team that won? No, we are concerned here only with the fact there is no joy in Mudville. Never mind where there is joy.

Take the game’s anthem: “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” What’s the key line? “If they don’t win it’s a shame.” The guy who wrote that knew baseball.

So, I wouldn’t consider most of MasterCard’s list as representative of the grand old game as you and I know it. I would prefer an alternate list. Such as:

1. You say you saw Koufax pitch? Well, I saw Koufax bat. Never mind the four no-hitters, the strikeouts, the shutouts. The definitive memory I have of Sandy Koufax is in 1962 when he hit a home run off--get this--Warren Spahn! Now, Sandy was a lifetime .097 hitter with the Dodgers (he hit over .100 only once in his career, .177) and when he hit that home run, Spahnie chased him around the bases with cords standing out in his neck, calling Sandy every name he could think of (and, with Spahn, there were a lot of them). As Sandy rounded third that day, Milwaukee’s Eddie Mathews growled, “You’re making a sick joke out of this game!” A Koufax homer off Warren Spahn makes my highlight list hands down.

2. You can talk of Carl Hubbell’s five Hall of Famer strikeouts in an All-Star game, but how about Stan Williams walking in the 1962 pennant for the Giants? How about Manager Walt Alston ordering an intentional base on balls to the previous batter (Ed Bailey) to load the bases and set up the tragedy? The circumstances were these: The Dodgers carried a 4-2 lead into the final inning of the playoffs. As the disastrous inning unfolded, the Giants tied the score and had the bases loaded with two out when Williams walked Jim Davenport. Run up the pennant for San Francisco. The fateful inning saw the Dodgers contributing four bases on balls, an error and a wild pitch. The Giants got four runs--and a pennant--on two hits, including one in the infield.

3. You can home in on Bill Mazeroski’s home run in the bottom of the ninth that won the 1960 World Series over the New York Yankees, if you like. But come with me to the eighth inning of that game. The Yankees were leading, 7-4, as Pittsburgh came to bat. Gino Cimoli singled to open the inning. Then came the routine double-play ball that probably decided the Series. It was what Joe Garagiola would describe as “a room-service double play.” Except that the ball, off the bat of Bill Virdon, hit the infamous surface of Forbes Field’s infield, known throughout the National League as “the coal mine.” It bounced off an outcropping of anthracite, came up and hit Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat. It almost cost him his voice. It cost his team the World Series. A short time later, a backup catcher, Hal Smith, hit a home run with two on to put the Pirates ahead, 9-7. He never would have gotten to bat if the ball to Kubek hadn’t found a rock. Mazeroski’s homer in the ninth would have been merely interesting.

4. Some people gave some consideration to the comeback of the New York Mets in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series as the definitive one, and that would make our pantheon, too, because of the ball that trickled through Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs. But our vote would have gone to the 10-run seventh inning posted by the Philadelphia Athletics over the Chicago Cubs at Philadelphia in 1929. Not for the comeback, for the collapse. The Cubs had an 8-0 lead at the time. What mades this collapse memorable was that the Chicago center fielder, Hack Wilson, misjudged two fly balls in the inning. One of them went for an inside-the-park home run and scored three runs before he could run it down. Now, Slugger Hack was as famous for rum as runs. With runs, he either drove them in--or let them in. In this inning, he let in five runs. Years later, teammate Pat Malone put the right note on it: “Hack did all right for a guy who saw three balls.”

5. One of the early eliminations in the balloting (62 moments were originally cited, then culled to 20) was a relief-pitching stint of 17 innings by Ed Rommel of the Athletics in 1932. It was not exactly Goose Gossage stuff. Eddie gave up 29 hits (and 14 runs) in that stint. He gave up eight hits to one batter alone, Cleveland shortstop Johnny Burnett, who set a major league record of nine hits in a game that day. That’s one game I wish I’d seen.

6. You can cite Nolan Ryan’s five no-hitters, Koufax’s four or Vander Meer’s two straight, but let’s have a moment of silence for Harvey Haddix, who pitched the longest no-hitter in baseball history. And lost. He pitched a perfect game for 12 innings for Pittsburgh against Milwaukee in 1959. His opponent, Lew Burdette, had a 12-hitter. Haddix lost the perfect game to an error and the no-hitter (and the game) to a home run in the bottom of the 13th. Actually, he almost didn’t lose the game. When Joe Adcock hit the bottom-of-the-13th home run, there was one out and teammates Henry Aaron and Felix Mantilla on first and second. When the home run cleared the fence, Aaron cut for the dugout at second base instead of continuing on to the plate. Adcock was declared out for passing him. Mantilla was called back on the field to score. Had there been two out, the game might have gone on. The final score went into the record book as 1-0. Haddix lost his no-hitter, Adcock lost his home run and baseball lost a legend.

You see, baseball is not all ticker-tape parades to City Hall. Baseball is about losing. The poet, Aeneas, wrote about “the sense of tears in mortal things.” Baseball fans know where he’s coming from. You’re not a fan till your favorite pitcher walks in the winning run, your favorite hitter pops up with the bases loaded, your favorite team blows an 8-0 lead in the eighth inning. That’s when baseball finds out who its friends are. Those are the real highlights. The might-have-beens.